Played
A Dark Room through a few more times and figured out a number of things I hadn't caught on to before.
1) The "gather wood" button gives you 50 wood immediately. However your gatherers keep going around the clock whether you hit that button or not. The same with collect traps, vs your hunters.
2) This is a big one. Which "screen" you leave yourself on drives whether you get good random encounters, bad random encounters, or no random encounters. And random encounters pause the game (i.e. pause your gatherer's resource collection) until you click on their messages.
- A Firelit Room random encounters are always good or at least have the potential to be good.
- Village random encounters are always bad and you lose people, huts, traps, medicine etc. So don't sit on the Village watching until it is time to gather wood/traps again. Click on Village to check, click them if it's time, and then go back to the Firelit Room to wait again.
- A Dusty Path does not have random encounters. Random encounters pause the game (and your resource gatherers) until you click your choice. So if you are going to leave the game unattended and want to gain resources the entire time you're gone, leave the game on A Dusty Path. Also be sure your gatherer set up is how you want, something like a deficit on wood can take out curated meat production which can take out all of your mining once that runs out too.
3) Mentioned in an earlier post... die 10 times to hunger and 10 times to thirst early on to get two perks where you go farther on food and water. Dying of thirst is much easier if you do it before you create the waterskin, cask, or water tank. I may carry 2 cured meats to die of hunger figuring I'll use one to heal in a fight, and 3 cured meats to die of thirst for the same reason and so I don't die of hunger before thirst.
4) You lose whatever you are carrying when you die. So when intentionally dying, don't take any weapons, etc.
5) When intentionally dying of hunger/thirst, I move away and explore trying to find the Iron mine. New revealed map won't stay on the map when you die, but you'll know where it is and can now arm up normally and go clear it and start collecting Iron as you finish off your death runs. Having Iron Armor makes dying to hunger/thirst much easier since you will win fights easily.
6) The wandering guy who wants lodging and will teach you one of three perks, by leaving your game on A Firelit Room you'll get him much more frequently and can get all 3 perks. The Force perk is best for when you have several melee weapons, the other two I'd say about equal to each other. Once you have all three, start turning him away as it costs resources to let him stay.
7) When traveling, you heal when you move a step or two, so it's not always necessary to eat meat to heal at the end of a fight.
8) I undervalued bolas early on. Sometimes I've used them first thing and a tough opponent never even got to attack me back. At 10 teeth they are very cheap to make, too.
9) You can use all weapons you took with you simultaneously in any fight. There's 4 melee weapons, don't make the mistake of leading with the weakest ones (bone spear, iron sword). Start your fight with the bayonet and steel sword swings. Or with a bola.
